Kapanalig Sa Wala - Literally, one who also have faith in nothing, is a play on words and wasn't really intended to mean something. It was made in jest to call the atheist camp when I was still actively debating god in one of the demised public forums out there. I think walang pananalig (faithless) would have proven to be more precise but I think the intended humor will be lost.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Somebody commented in the Darwin Day 2009 post about me supposedly as "really zealous in being a member of the religion called "atheism" in the guise of science" and that he would just pray that blah blah blah. Here is another example of somebody who just doesn't get it. I replied to him that "atheism is not a religion nor is science" and that "everybody, including theists appreciate science." He wants to see atheists who happens to love science as having a religion called science which is actually atheism. At first I thought he was being funny but he was not. He was just being irrational. He has deceived himself with mixing obviously different things. If he can just do an honest inquiry into this reasoning anomaly, he can surely find out what is religion and what is science and what their basic differences are. Religion oftentimes, and this is specially true to the Christian religion with which he is subscribed to, will ignore science if that is what's needed in order to keep its truths. Science on the other hand is concerned about reality and how it operates, (and if I may add just to be in context) REGARDLESS of religious truths. Scientific truths are not absolute and may one day be overturned by new discoveries. They operate quite differently when it comes to finding out the truth. For example, many truths in Christianity usually come from some near absolute if not absolute source of authority like the pope or the bible while truths in science doesn't hold such authorities to high esteem. What is important in science is that these hypotheses be testable/verifiable and falsifiable. So it may be that this indifference of science to religious truths is at the bottom of his assertion? And then there is the atheism being a religion. Well as they said, only if being bald is called a hairstyle. This so very cliche now: atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Although there are religions that are atheistic in that they don't have gods (so I heard but I myself don't know), if by religion he meant believing in something, and making this object of belief an object of worship, then atheism having no belief on gods obviously doesn't have anything to function as an object of worship. So he must be saying that instead of god, I believe in science, and am a devout believer of it to the point of worship? Now, "devout" is a religious word that has no place in science and I think this gives him away. He may be wishing that atheists in general must believe in something in place of their gods, in my case I am devout about atheism or science, only to reassure himself that we, despite of the opposing position about god, are actually in the same boat. That atheists are religionists too. No, sir. Thank you. My atheism is about being free from your religion (of Christianity). I don't wish to replace it with another crap.